What kind of things do you need to do there?

So that I don't give away customer confidential information, let me instead enumerate some of the things I use Perl for to do back-end processing in some JSP/Servlet applications that I've created. Keep in mind there are ways to do this in Java as well, but in some cases I don't want the added overhead of the JVM/JRE.

• Cleaning out old records in database tabls and emailing the results
• Conversion of uploaded spreadsheets and/or CSV files to databsae rows
• Cleaning old temporary files the JSP application leaves behind.
• Backup of database to offsite system

That's just a short list of things I have Perl doing behind the scenes.

One of the items that I have Perl doing on one web application I maintain is Java is not allowed to send email directly. The capability exists, but there is no equivilant of Email::Valid to check for invalid email addreses. So the Java application queues up the email send request to a database table and a Perl script that awakens from cron checks the validity of the request, formats the email and sends it on its way.